Congressman Darrell Issa is headed south of the border to Mexico this week as more evidence shows guns sold to Mexican drug cartels through the Obama Justice Department's Operation Fast and Furious were used to kill innocents, specifically in a high profile case involving a Mexican attorney after he was tortured extensively.
Two guns sold to a Mexican cartel and used in the high-profile kidnapping and murder of a Mexican lawyer last year were purchased under the U.S. Justice Department's failed anti-gun trafficking program Operation Fast and Furious.
U.S. law enforcement sources and officials in Washington told Fox News that two AK-47s were purchased in Arizona by a straw buyer — someone who legally buys guns, then illegal sells them to a third party – and were allowed to “walk” into Mexico. Police recovered the guns in the course of their investigation of the kidnapping of Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez.
Gonzales, brother of the now former attorney general of Chihuahua, Patricia Gonzalez Rodriguez, was kidnapped in October. He was taken by six gunmen from the Sinaloa cartel and tortured extensively over two weeks.
Three videos posted online show Gonzalez surrounded by hooded armed men with his hands and feet bound and apparently being electrocuted with electrical devises attached to his feet.
Gonzalez’s body was found last November in a shallow grave outside the city after armed federal police forces raided the kidnappers' compound. Mexican officials arrested the suspects and confiscated the guns.
Mexico was not told the confiscated guns were part of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Operation Fast and Furious until the past week.
Remember, officials in the Mexican government claim they were never informed about Operation Fast and Furious, yet has been seeing the deadly results of it. Issa is traveling there to bring them up to speed on the situtation.
On Friday, oversight committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who has been leading the investigation of the ATF operation with Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), will travel with a bipartisan delegation to Mexico, partly in an attempt to draw the government there further into the investigation.
In a letter this week to Mexico's U.S. ambassador, Arturo Sarukhan, Issa and Grassley requested serial numbers of all firearms recovered in "substantial" violent crimes, along with the numbers of any other weapons that government officials have reason to believe may be connected to the operation.
"This information would be tremendously helpful to us in determining the full scale of the effects of Operation Fast and Furious, which includes the deaths of both Mexican and American citizens," the two lawmakers wrote. "We have a shared interest with you in getting to the bottom of this matter."
Issa will be joined by eight other U.S. lawmakers for meetings Saturday in Mexico City at the federal police command center and also with representatives of the U.S. Embassy.